Details

ColorComb was my first real introduction to full-stack web development. The goal of the project was to learn how to create a multi-page web application that performed CRUD operations.

ColorComb manages the creation and authentication of accounts using PHP and stores data and credentials in a MySQL instance. All account passwords are stored as BCrypt hashes and authorization is managed through server-side sessions and cookies.

Features such as creating or viewing palettes, liking other user's creations are examples of CRUD operations to manipulate SQL database records.

Lessons Learned

When starting out, it's important to understand the low-level processes that take place in web apps. These foundational skills then are highly transferable to modern web server frameworks like Laravel or Spring Boot. Frameworks not only make your life easier but give a standard practice to the development of applications which helps other developers understand the codebase faster.

The ColorComb project also helped me understand that you should try to split your application into tiers. Instead of writing PHP with HTML/CSS/JavaScript, you want to separate the frontend and backend. Then you can communicate actions using HTTP which helps improve app security and clean up the codebase.